Laboratory analysis of chemical and biological samples is a time consuming process involving hundreds to thousands of samples for a typical test. The demand for such testing for drug development, diagnostic, analytical, and other applications have led to the development of laboratory automation systems that aspirate, mix, dispense, read and track identities, load and unload from low temperature storage units, among numerous other operations, according to the specific experimental and handling protocols on large numbers of samples. Current standards include plates that contain arrays of wells (96, in an 8×12 array, or 384, in a 16×24 array) that hold liquid samples during processing and transfers between robotic platforms. To keep the liquid solutions inside the wells, the plates are often heat sealed with a sheet, typically made from plastic or plastic coated aluminum foil, which is currently the most cost effective and easily applied method. A typical commercially available system for creating such seals is the PLATELOC® Thermal Plate Sealer from Velocity11 (Agilent Technologies, Menlo Park, Calif.). Simple adhesive backed sealing sheets are also available. Other sealing methods may also be used, but they tend to be more expensive, time consuming, and only marginally more effective, involving multi-piece assemblies with cover locks, diaphragms, or other mechanisms.
The plates are transferred, heated, centrifuged, bead beaten, and other operations depending on the specific experimental protocol. After these processes are completed, access to the samples is required for testing and analysis, which is commonly achieved by piercing the seal over the desired well to aspirate the sample, or to peel off the entire seal to expose all of the wells. Piercing of the seal may be robotically friendly, but since resealing is achieved by applying a new seal other the pierced seal, there is a limit to the number of times the wells on a given plate can be accessed. After multiple piercing and resealing operations, the seal can become too thick to pierce.
Manually peeling back the seal from the entire plate can be time consuming since the seal sheet often tears into pieces unless the pulling force is very uniform. It can also create adhesive strings that cross wells, and jostle the open wells, both of which increase the chance of cross-contamination.
The need remains for a device and method for desealing well plates and other containers sealed with peelable seals that exploits that economical nature of the film seals yet permits ready access to and resealing of the plate. The present invention is directed to such a need.